2013 predictions in technical communication
Here we go again! My traditional blog topic to kick off a new year: predictions.
Mission: Impossible? Consistently good ebook formatting across devices
Your mission, should you decide to accept it: distribute content as ebooks.
Gone with the width: what’s the optimal length for a line of text?
When it comes to a line of text, how long is too long? And do the rules for text column width change when content is rendered on different devices?
2012 tekom thoughts
Some thoughts on technical communication, content strategy, and the state of the industry at tekom/tcworld 2012.
Design isn’t free
The mantra of XML is that you separate content from formatting. Authors do content; formatting happens later. During a panel discussion at last week’s (excellent) UA Europe conference, I realized that this is only half the story.
Cloudy with a chance of WOMBAT
For remote work, file management in the cloud is way easy. Other methods, not so much…
From Boulder to Bangalore
When I was a high school student in Boulder, Colorado, my first job was as a stock boy in an India-imports store. The store, Hamara Dukan, stocked all sorts of handicrafts and objets d’art from India including clothing, wood carvings, brass bowls and knickknacks, hand-printed bedspreads, incense, Kashmiri boxes, and thousands of other items. After working there for a couple of years, I acquired an appreciation of the things the country produced, but was always curious about the people and what it was like to be in India.
Another peril in ebook publishing: Amazon KF8 compatibility
KF8. Nope, it’s not K2‘s long-lost mountain cousin. It’s Amazon’s new ebook format.
While dealing with this new format probably isn’t as daunting as scaling a 28,251 ft. mountain, KF8 is providing a particularly bothersome challenge right out of the gate: it’s not compatible with any Kindle devices other than the Kindle Fire!
2012 predictions in technical communication
It’s time for that annual exercise in humiliation known as the “review of last year’s predictions” followed by the “some people never learn” event in which I soldier on with new predictions.
